’Cat Tales: Maintaining a Legacy

Leaving an Arboreal Legacy

On a cold and damp Friday morning, students dug five holes at the corner of Third and Chestnut street to plant trees in honor of Arbor Day.

The Interfraternity Council teamed up with the campus Institute for Sustainable Development to do something special for the last day of Earth Week, and that was to receive Tree Campus USA Designation.

Surprisingly, Chico State was not yet recognized. The criteria are establishing a committee, a campus tree-care plan, a program with dedicated annual expenditures, Arbor Day observance, and a service-learning project.

Last week’s Arbor Day observance was one of the last items to cross of the list.

Each fraternity chapter took part in buying trees and did the work of planting them.

“Once you finish it and you actually take a step back and look at it after hours of work, it’s really satisfying,” said senior mechanical engineering major Geoffrey Leeds.

Josh Berglund, a senior sociology major, was one of the leaders in organizing the tree-planting along with Fletcher Alexander, the campus sustainability coordinator.

“I’ve been amazingly impressed with how many people showed up and how quickly we got it done,” Alexander said. “We were expecting to be done around 5, and we’re done at noon.”

Luckily, they finished early and narrowly missed the rain and hail later that afternoon.

Berglund looks forward to returning with his future children and seeing the trees.

“Coming back here in like 20-30 years and saying, ‘No big deal, but I planted those,'” he said.

• • •

Students Bring Home Coveted Awards From Sales Competition

The Chico State sales team took first place at the Western States Collegiate Sales Competition—for the fourth year in a row.

After months of preparation, including meeting for hours each day in the month leading up to the late-April competition, Chico State beat out University of Texas at Dallas, Baylor University, and Arizona State University, to name a few.

The team included Morgan Ardito, Alyvia Berryhill, Jennifer Bosse, and Jaypinderpal Virdee. They were led by the director of the professional sales program, Tim Heinze, and professor Bill McGowan.

“We owe the world to Tim and Bill for everything they’ve done for us and this program,” said Virdee, a senior organizational communications major and minor in marketing.

The students are judged on their role-playing, ability to come up with sales solutions, and overall presentation.

“You have to be very critical, very strategic, and very articulate,” Virdee said. “During the competition, I reminded myself to have fun, because it’s just role-play.”

Virdee said that the team just wanted to represent Chico State and continue the streak.

“I think this is one of the proud moments for the College of Business, the sales program—you really get to show the elite school Chico State really is,” Virdee said.

• • •

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the 48-Hour Film Festival

How hard could it be to film a disaster movie with a party hat? It would lead to an interesting plot, but it sounds doable. At least, until you realize it has to be done in two days.

Last week, students split into teams and drew the random genres and props out of a hat. These would shape each team’s project. They then had 48 hours to write, film, and edit a short film. Here’s a behind-the-scenes looks at my team’s experience, which consisted of Jeff Barron, Cammi Carter, Zach Rotter, and Corryn Fleming.

Friday

4 p.m. — The genres and props are given. The clock starts.

4:30 p.m. — I walk in late to find out that my group was given a party hat and is supposed to make a disaster film. Great.

5:30 p.m. — We meet at my house to start spitballing ideas and write a script.

7:30 p.m. — We’ve gotten nowhere. Let’s eat instead.

Saturday

2:04 p.m. — We’ve moved our spitballing idea party to Tehama Hall. Our ideas range from an evil party hat causing natural disasters to a sacred party hat retrieved from an Aztec temple. The hard part about acting on these ideas is creating these special effects in less than 48 hours. But we did have a 30-minute discussion on how we could possibly create a pyramid in Chico.

3:29 p.m. — We start to make a list of our top pet peeves, or as we referred to them, our “personal disasters.”